A pre-college architecture program for blind and low-vision high school students
Architecture is often understood as visual. Blind designers are changing that. Blind Design Workshop Boston introduces blind and low-vision students to architecture through hands-on design exercises, mentorship, portfolio development, and exposure to college-level studio culture.
Blind Design Workshop Boston is a space for blind and low-vision high school students to explore architecture as a creative, intellectual, and professional field.
Students will build new skills, experiment with design methods, connect with blind architects and mentors, and learn more about what architecture school can look like for them. The program is grounded in the idea that blindness is not a barrier to design. It can also be a source of insight, method, and creative possibility.
Students will take part in a series of studio modules that introduce core ideas in architecture through multisensory and nonvisual approaches.
Topics may include tactile drawing, physical model-making, close listening in architectural spaces, creative audio description, and other design exercises that expand how architecture can be taught and understood.
Students will also receive woodshop and digital fabrication training designed with blind learners in mind.
The program is designed to help students explore whether architecture or a related design field might be right for them.
BDW Boston is being developed for blind and low-vision high school students who are curious about architecture, design, making, space, art, cities, or the built environment. No prior experience in architecture is required.
Blind Design Workshop Boston is co-founded by blind architects and advanced architecture students who have completed architecture school or are currently moving through it themselves: Emily Aitchinson, Paul DeFazio, Jesse Fung, Poppy Levinson, Nola Timmins, and Hannah Wong.
The program is shaped by people with firsthand experience navigating design education as blind students and practitioners, and whose perspectives are supplemented by guests with expertise that ranges from blind career architects, vocational specialists, accessibility specialists, policy advocates, and more.
Blind Design Workshop began at the Virginia Tech School of Architecture through the work of Andrew Gipe-Lazarou. The Boston branch builds on that foundation while developing its own curriculum in conversation with blind designers, educators, and disability-led design practices.
The curriculum also draws on related work such as Architecture Beyond Sight at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, as well as pre-architecture coursework developed through the National Federation for the Blind.
It is further informed by blind and disabled architects, designers, researchers, and creatives who are expanding what design means, who gets to practice it, and who it is for.
We are currently developing a pilot program for Spring 2027 for Massachusetts students.
If you would like updates about the pilot, future opportunities, or ways to be involved, join our mailing list below.
For collaboration, sponsorship, or other questions, contact admin@bdwboston.com.